Commercial Landscaping and Gardening Services

Integrated Pest Management

At The Northwest Gardener we implement an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) system to effectively manage pests using all available tactics. The Washington Pesticide Laws and Safety describes this as, "IPM offers the possibility of improving the efficiency of pest control programs while reducing their negative impacts. Many successful IPM programs have resulted in reduced energy and pesticide use." (Brown et al. 2012).

While we do use pesticides, we strive to incorporate the appropriate IPM given a specific property to limit the amount necessary. To do this we utilize:

Mechanical controls, such as hand tools to prevent the spread unwanted weeds or pests

Cultural controls, by selecting plants more suited for any given site that will naturally thrive

Biological controls, through the encouragement and artificial increase of predators of a pest species